A weary Rodimus Prime decides to step down, naming Springer as his successor. It is the year 2150 and the last Decepticon has fallen in battle on Cybertron. The story appeared in the 1989 “Transformers” annual from Marvel U.K., written by Richard Alan with art by Robin Smith. The horror of this war, and the tantalizing prospect of its end, is what makes “Peace” such a tragic, memorable story. Autobot and Decepticon alike are warriors now, either by necessity or choice. The two sides have been fighting for millions of years, have seen cities and worlds all but destroyed by war, and have lost countless friends and comrades to the battlefield. The scale of the Autobot/Decepticon conflict is so immense that it’s almost hard to comprehend.

From humble beginnings, something very special was about to happen. The series sold so well that the decision was quickly taken to turn it into an ongoing series. Ralph Macchio and Jim Salicrup do a good job of juggling the large cast and there’s even a guest appearance by Spider-Man (in his black costume) to show that the series takes place in the Marvel Universe. The age-old conflict, the crashed Ark, the renewal of hostilities on a new world - it’s all here. Regardless, the series was crucial for setting into place the building blocks that would underpin the entire franchise. This wasn’t helped by many characters being inconsistently drawn and colored, leading to unintentional comedy as characters switch color schemes, and gain and lose body parts between panels. Characters introduce themselves and describe their powers in great detail, while Frank Springer’s artwork portrays most characters as close to their toy forms, rather than the more expressive, humanized features that they would later adopt. Despite its significance as readers’ introduction to the Transformers, these four issues can’t help but feel rather basic, with a tone somewhere between an info dump and a toy commercial.

Transformers, Vol. 5 by Bob Budiansky